Midwife Blues

Go read Old City Blues.  It's pretty good.


Uploaded by Loftus1994 on Jul 20, 2009

What a crappy week.  This is the week that made me want to quit my job.  All signs are pointing to getting the hell out of this line of work and out of this town.  I spent the better part of this weekend catching up with things I missed, back tracking my steps and seeing where I went right instead of left or vice versa.  I remembered,  before I started working at my current job, I had a lot of fun singing online karaoke and I met a lot of cool people.  I joked around a lot, and put my talents to use.  I was in my comfort zone then.  Now I'm a wage slave, and things just seem to be getting worse for me.  I need an exit strategy.

I had a coworker tell me repeatedly to not sell myself short.  Sometimes you need to hear that stuff a lot before it starts to really awaken in your mind.  I know why I started working at this place, I remember what my original intentions were, and where I drew the line, but somewhere things got blurry.  And it really hasn't been that long, but in two and a half years I've given this job too much ground in my life.  I need to change that.


So here's something that floated around in my head this week:  If necessity is the mother of invention, then inspiration has got to be the midwife. I've got this on the brain, because creatively I have been in a slump for a while. I've had a few short bursts of inspiration and motivation this year, but not enough to give me a good trajectory. My mood seems to be a little flighty and I have trouble shifting between personal responsibilities, research, self-amusement, and creative practice. I feel so disorganized and stressed out and often times trapped. I guess these are also things that make me want to quit my day job, but I need the income to support a move like that.

I did this little sketch after Benito Cereno suggested somebody do an homage to the cover of Fantastic Four #39. I wonder if I'll follow through with this.  I did make some progress with some personal things:  getting a ticket mostly taken care of.  I finished BPRD: Plague of Frogs, Hellboy: Trollwitch, and fnished The Living and The Dead by Jason in one sitting.  I watched a little Adventure Time and Community, and digressed with a viewing of Raijin Oh, discovered Witch & Knight, read a tiny bit of Templar, AZ, and did some time line parsing.  At some point I rediscovered the title of the film Messidor and unearthed my old college notebooks.  I kind of feel like excavating all this stuff from my past is helping me get perspective on my situation, where once all that stuff seemed to keep me running in circles.  It's become very important for me to see where my head and heart have been through different moments of my life, inspiration being as fleeting as it is these days.

Equal to the Love You Make

It was a tough week.  I came down with a sore throat Tuesday, that developed into a sinus and bronchial infection.  I held faith in my immune system and made good decisions on rest, nutrition, and hydration.  But then on Friday I had a terrible allergic reaction to, possibly, almonds that left me weak all day and gave me hives all over my body.  I was able to keep the swelling and itching at bay with some generic allegra, but when I got home I realized my entire body was red.  I was almost scared to fall asleep, but I was dead tired.  Thankfully the rest was mostly what I needed.

So through the week I consumed a lot of fiction.  I read the entire Hellboy: Troll With and Other Stories, Uncanny X-force: Deathlok Nation, and Marvel's Girl Comics.  I also watched Captain America: The First Avenger, a little bit of Psyche, started Community.  Speaking of which, twitter was on fire this weekend when a press release revealed Dan Harmon would no longer be involved with making the show.  What I time for me to jump in, huh? 



I just discovered Kristen McCabe and Sabrina Alberghetti.  Also Mariel Kinuko Cartwrightl. In fact, I discovered or was reminded of a lot of talented female creators while reading Girl Comics, some of my favorites being:  Amanda, Conner, Colleen Coover, Ming Doyle, Lucy Knisley, Marie Severin, Devin Grayson, Emma Rios, Barbara Ciardo, Jill Thompson, Faith Erin Hicks, Emma Vieceli, Jo Chen, Marjorie Liu, Sara Pichelli, Rachelle Rosenberg, Stephanie Hans, Louise Simonson, June Brigman, Ann Nocenti, Sho Murase, Carla Speed McNeil, Ronda Pattison, and Glynis Oliver.  My favorite stories were Mixology at Terato Gena's, Things That Never Change, Do You Ever?, Head Space, and Dogged Pursuit.

I spent a little time doing a little personal history project and found some neat resources for tracing pop cultural phenomena of particular years.  While doing that I rediscovered the film Tideland by Terry Gilliam, as well as a film called Momo.  I'm also flirting with the idea of listing every movie I've ever seen by year.  I think part of my fascination with plotting these timeline things is realizing how finite one's attention span is in the middle of a particular stream of thought, and how little a snapshot of the world we get in each moment.  Going back and piecing disparate pieces of information together is like building a panoramic shot from smaller snapshots.  I'm recreating something with a larger scope, a broader meaning, with fragments of things that are ornate, textured, and specific.  I like this process!

The Important Business of Life

It's May 13 2012, Mother's Day.  I took a long walk in the afternoon sun today and it refreshed my spirits.  I also wrote a short memoir about my mother.   I am currently developing it into a comic.

This week I found out about creamsicle, started following Mara Wilson, and supported Kazu's Daisy Kutter reprint kickstarter.  The work week passed relatively painlessly, and I drew quite a bit of silliness.  Oh yeah, I also started designing Kadunka K!

I read a bit of RASL, and BPRD, and Children of the Sea, and Wormworld Saga which are all excellent. 


Published on May 12, 2012 by youcancallmeking

I spent some time reminiscing about the recent past, pulling up old blog posts, trying to wrap my head around the timeline, and trying to add information to it that I wasn't aware of at that moment in time.  I'm a little obsessed with this, trying to piece together fragments of a narrative.  I'm completely consumed with trying to resurrect all those lost, forgotten details trying to understand how those ancillary things hover in and out of our consciousness sometimes shaping the landscape of our perception.  How is it that they sometimes exist for so long without notice, and then suddenly become the center of attention, or go the reverse perishing into the dark corners of our memory?


Uploaded by N222011 on Feb 15, 2011

RIP Maurice Sendak

I Think of All This Time

Uploaded by WTTWest on Jun 2, 2011

This is my 180th post. All week I was looking forward to being productive.  I had an inkling of an idea for a shirt design for the 6th comics on tees challenge, which happened to be based on Neil Gaiman's The Day the Saucer's Came.  And then with the realization that May 4th was rapidly approaching I had a silly idea for a May the 4th be with you t-shirt.  But I ended up getting sidetracked, things came crashing down around me, and then MCA died, and then there I was penned up at home drinking by myself on Cinco de Mayo.


I guess I should look at the bright side.  I got to watch Lexxy stream and had a light bulb moment.  I read a bunch of Worm World Saga, which is gorgeous.  I discovered Dororo.  I had to return my library books and wasn't able to get back The First Man, but I did get back BPRD: Plague of Frogs and I nabbed Marian Churchland's Beast, Uncanny X-Force : Deathlock Nation, Girl Comics, RASL: The Drift, Junko Mizuno's Princess Mermaid, The Living and The Dead by Jason, Hellboy: The Right Hand of Doom, Hellboy: The Troll With and Others, H.P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horror by Richard Corben, Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi, and Mitsuru Adachi's Cross Game!


But I might be overcompensating for missing TCAF. Also The Avengers movie came out.  Here's arts:

This lady I drew as practice for some new techniques I'm trying in Sai. She is a non-descript lady and looks very bored.

This is a portrait of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. RIP MCA. You will never be forgotten.

This is a sketch I did of my friend's dog, Roddy. He's is kinda hecka cute, so I drew him.

And this is a sketch I did of Bolin, because that just seems to be the thing to do right now on tumblr and in LoK fandom in general.  Case in point: Hino


Next I did some sketches of something. You can guess that something, and maybe I will reveal to you the full color image. That should properly motivate me to actually do the full color version

I think I lost a lot of time this weekend worrying, and then getting lost in a giant playlist I made of Futurama, Adventure Time, Touch, Kimagure Orange Road, Psych and other stuff.  It was definitely a weekend of feeling down and off.  April was  a really rough month on me, and May is kind of the wildcard one.  June is definitely my freedom month, and July.  Well July is just too far away.

Time just keeps slipping through my fingers, and I find myself glancing back trying to figure out how so much of it got behind me.  

I really hope I can start making money from this art thing, because these lottery tickets are just piling up and I don't know how much more of the day job I can take.  Art gods, do you hear me?

Never Mess With Sunday

A few weeks ago I was distressed to learn that Danny Zabbal's Journey to the 6th Dimension is no longer available to read on the internet. I have the confounding tendency to bookmark things I want to read, and not return to them for months, and in this instance I realize I may never get to read what looked like a very fun & mystical story. I've emailed him to see if it is indeed missing from the internet.

 In the meantime go read his more recent work here. Drawn Paper Scissors introduced me to the work of Yan Nascimbene's beautiful travel themed watercolors. Tumblr is just filled with a gajillion brilliant sketchy blogs such as A Pint of Strychnine by cigueducami and Viva la Resistance by Preoprix Here are some good deviantarts I stumbled upon as well: Tuooneo and ReillyBrown.

I've attached another Migret sketch I worked on 2 weeks ago.  I haven't been in the mood to develop things beyond designing a helmet that I'd been neglecting to draw.  Toward the end of the week I started doodling some characters with the principle interest in designing around eye expressions.  A pair of mangled cutesy eyes became the baby cthulu sketch that I've worked up into color.

I missed Stumptown again this year because I'm dead broke.  I wish I had some money so that I could go fly to TCAF next weekend. I also wish I could buy one of these spiffy Monoprice tablets Ray's been gushing over.  This same old song and dance is getting tiresome.  I have this dream that I'll launch a website with some comics on it and know how to monetize things right away and within a few months walk away from my day job.  I'll begin collaborating with my 15 year old self and flesh out whimsical story concepts I had as a kid into beautiful, lush worlds with complex characters, and intelligent stories told in refreshing ways.  And then maybe that year I'll be at all of these festivals and shows selling comics & art instead of trying to finish reading my library books before they're due.


Uploaded by happybackwards on Sep 22, 2010

I need a hug

Kickball! from dana terrace on Vimeo.

Lexxy updated her website!

I can't recommend Eat More Bikes by Nathan Bulmer enough! Soulful Sunday is the perfect evening repast after a sunday afternoon of noodling.

People who have money to give, take note!

Cucumber Quest is coming to print, and your additional donations can determine it's quality! Also soon to follow is The Antler Boy and other stories by Jake Parker. TCAF is in 2 weeks, and you have the opportunity to not only score some minis from Geneva Hodgson, but you can also help Dale O'Flaherty get there as well.

I might have forgotten to mention I discovered the work of Yuta Onoda last week. Similarly, the work of Sara Pichelli came to me as if by dream. Okay, I also forgot to mention Fiona Staples.

This week I barbecued a lot, watched a lot of Archer, had a drunk blackout, and made some headway in BPRD and Agents of Atlas. Great pulpy fun those two comics, and Archer, BBQ and Drunk I'm pretty sure are keywords to hedonistic fulfillment.

I tried to sketch some fanart for Lexxy's forthcoming The Cloud Factory.


I also tried to sketch something for this Threadless Comics on Tees contest for the CBLDF, but I can't show you that for development's sake, and also because it is sloppy and I am a horrible artist. Yay! I need a hug.

Whenever I feel down, I should always remember that Nedroid Comics always make me smile. If that fails, take solace in the skepticism of Ron Swarschach.

I'm probably late to this, but I'm really loving these Spera comics by Josh Tierney & company. This past week I was also introduced to the art of gtakos and liga-marta.


Published on Apr 14, 2012 by CamerataXara

Friday was the 13th which I learned from the Boy Howdy Podcast commemorates the day the Knights Templar were summarily hunted down and executed by King Philip IV. This weekend also commemorated the 100th anniversay of the sinking of the Titanic.

I finally watched The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It was pretty clever. I probably enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth and Mirror Mask a little more, but I think the three would make an awesome movie weekend together.

The days are becoming lovelier, and so many great shows are coming up like Stumptown and TCAF, but I am feel so far away from enjoying any of them. I've got this tremendous weight on my shoulders, the manacles of servitude precipitated by a misspent youth, and I am loathe to face it's daily harangue. Would that I could be free. Would that I were to win the lottery and cast off the yoke. Dreams.

I sketched a not so safe for work jungle lady here. I also worked up some sketches of a new character. Her name is Migret and she came to me in February. Since then she keeps kicking in my creative womb and more of her is revealed to me. Somewhere along the way she seeps into old dreams & ideas I've left in a drawer somewhere.